


Memories Forgotten

by pseudophoenix



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:46:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudophoenix/pseuds/pseudophoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>#UnderChron: I'm it! My two-word prompt: Memories forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories Forgotten

Gregor didn’t know what to expect in the years to come after his family moved away to Virginia. Everyone—even his mother, though she would never admit it—had been conflicted. They had known that there were friends under the ground that their son and daughters would miss greatly, though the parents decided together that moving would be for the best.

Gregor had grumbled to himself while packing furiously, choking down anger. He remembered Ripred ordering him sternly to stay in control of his rager powers in the Overland. _Maybe they’ll just go away altogether_ , Gregor’s mother had told him, with a hopeful smile on her still plague-scarred face.

The thing was, Gregor hadn’t wanted to forget. He didn’t really want his rager powers to go away, because they were a reminder of what he’d done for an unknown underground civilization. Without his scars to prove the Underland was real, it was nothing more than a dream. One of his falling nightmares that hadn’t quite ended because he had never hit the imaginary ground, and had instead gone on for much longer than it should have. It was like his mother had just woken him up from his dream, and it was already fading fast from his memory.

He was determined to think of the Underland every day. It was not hard because every morning he woke up and the first things he saw were the battle scars riddling his skin. That was much more than could be said for his sisters, though. Lizzie still spelled messages out on any surface she could find with her fingers making the clicking, scratching, tapping noises from the Tree of Transmission, and Boots—practically untouched by the war—still clicked in crawler speech every now and again, but after a few months, they stopped all that, too.

Gregor tried to think back to when he was eight and three years old. He couldn’t remember a thing from when he was a toddler, and a few fleeting memories from elementary school, but nothing worth noting. Nothing he would remember for the rest of his life, anyway.

He had hope for Lizzie, because she was smart, and who could forget being friends with a giant battle-scarred rat, anyway? Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Boots.

Over the years, she stopped warning, “Rat bad,” or holding her hand to her nose and saying, “Owww...” whenever she saw a picture of a rodent. Now, whenever she clicked her tongue, it was only to annoy her siblings, not to speak to insects. Gregor had officially lost hope when Boots—who they mostly called Maggie, now, because she had long-since grown out of her shoe-stealing habits—stopped liking being called  “princess,” and abandoned her dresses and skirts for pants when she learned to ride a horse on the family farm.

They went without speaking of the Underland for years, though it was always in the back of Gregor’s head. Although, it was brought back to the front one day when Margaret was in fifth grade.

They were sitting around the dinner table, and their dad spoke up and said, “Maggie, I talked to your teacher at the elementary school. She said you really liked what your class were studying today.”

“Yeah,” Maggie replied, her face lighting up. “We got to look at the bugs finally!” She starting counting off on her fingers. “We studied ants, and spiders, and cockroaches—”

“Roaches, huh?” Gregor asked, a grin spreading across his face.

“Yup, I named one just for fun, because the teacher said we could if we wanted.” She picked at her food some more. “I named my cockroach Temp.”

Everyone stopped eating except for Margaret, their mother’s face flashing panic.

Lizzie finally spoke up, breaking the silence that Maggie hadn’t even seemed to realize was surrounding them, “Why did you name it that, Boots?”

The Princess shrugged. “I dunno. Seems like a good cockroach name, don’t you think?”


End file.
